


Under the English Oak

by NorthernRose



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But honestly do I have the energy?, But then again I'm as hungry for Jon Snow in a suit as the next gal, F/M, I bloody love a wedding, I love me some haughty Sansa, Its great right?, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark Are Not Related, Jon Snow is Not a Stark, Lets all imagine Sansa is a Pippa Middleton-esque bridemaid dress, Possibility of smut to come?, Unresolved Romantic Tension, weddings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23595478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernRose/pseuds/NorthernRose
Summary: It has all worked out rather splendidly, which gives her an uneasy feeling. The weather is perfect, the kind of April morning that graces England far too frequently, like something out of the brain of Wordsworth, or Blake. It’s sunny, with a smattering of gentle clouds in the sky. The manor the bride and groom chose for their wedding is dream-worthy, everything she had imagined for herself as a girl.*Jon and Sansa reunite after being absent from one another's lives for a few years. Our backdrop is a very English wedding. Will they? Wont they? Let us find out...
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Robb Stark/Margaery Tyrell
Comments: 106
Kudos: 209





	1. Sansa

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dear hearts. Its a four day weekend in the UK, I hope you are well, wherever you may be.  
> I wrote this in the garden, it's glorious here! 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this sweet thing.  
> Uncommunicating Jonsa reunited after years apart, the tension, the romance, swoon!  
> I dare you to count the tropes on your fingers! 
> 
> This will likely be three of four chapters, and chapters will be short. I have most of it written but am just restructuring the damn thing because it turns out that when I write whilst simultaneously drinking a bottle of Prosecco... odd things happen. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, my little Easter bunnies. 
> 
> Rose x

“You look beautiful Sans, truly, it pains me to have a sister so pretty,” he said sweetly.

“Thank you, brother, you are far too charming for your own good,” she says with a smile, before nipping at her lip in concentration as she pins his boutonniere of ivory roses and gypsophelia to his button hole, “stand still, Robb, honestly your worse than your dog,” she tutted.

She steps back to appraise him, tilting her head to the side, hair swept and pinned in tumbling waves to the left of her face, “there, perfect, everything is going to be perfect,” she muttered to herself more than her brother.

“Sans, relax, everything is going to be perfect,” he laughed, “you’re more nervous than me.”

“Hush, I just know how much this means to Margaery,” she breathes out in a huff.

“I know, which is why you are the perfect Maid of Honour,” he grinned.

“Don’t be so tacky Robb, its Chief Bridesmaid, calling me a maid makes me sound old… or American,” she wrinkles her nose.

“God, I love it when you’re a snob!”

She laughs along with him, she is no longer so precious over such things, after all these years she knows how much it amuses the rest of her family when she gets on her high horse. She looks off to the chairs framing either side of the Georgian windows overlooking the gardens where Robb has plonked himself, rather unceremoniously for a man wearing a morning suit if you ask her. She longs to sit down for five minutes, but there is too much to do.

It has all worked out rather splendidly, which gives her an uneasy feeling. The weather is perfect, the kind of April morning that graces England far too frequently, like something out of the brain of Wordsworth, or Blake. It’s sunny, with a smattering of gentle clouds in the sky. The manor the bride and groom chose for their wedding is dream-worthy, everything she had imagined for herself as a girl.

There have been no disasters so far, Sansa had even safely herded Margaery’s grandmother back to her room at 1am last night only slightly worse for wear as _not-so-sweet_ Olenna whispered all the best tips to seduce the groomsmen in her ear, Sansa was no wallflower but even she was scandalised at the woman’s stamina. Her mother was happy, her sister was compliant enough with her list of tasks and Robb hadn’t been kidnapped by his friends and put on a ferry to France with a traffic cone on his head… _yet_. Its all rather lovely, and nothing more than her brother and her greatest friend deserve for their wedding day.

She turned back to appraise herself in the mirror, smoothing her hair before turning to look at the back of her dress. It really was a knockout gown. She had outdone herself, not that she would say it allowed. Marge’s decision for Sansa to wear white was all very _Pippa at Catherine and Williams wedding_ and she thought it was a triumph! It was almost a replica, save for Sansa’s dress having a much lower dip in the back. Only a Margaery Tyrell level of confidence would call for her to wear such a gown. She felt sensational.

“Jon’s here,” Robb says, leaning back easily in his chair and running a thumb absentmindedly across the hip flask their father had gifted to all the boys last night. He says it whilst looking out the window across the estate, almost lazily, but his perceived nonchalance doesn’t fool Sansa, the creeping grin quirking up one corner of his profile gives him away, she can practically imagine his eyes sparkling with mischief from the other side of the room.

“I should hope so too, considering he is the Best Man,” she offers, smoothing down her dress, a dress she was now even more thankful for, bless Margaery and her eternal effort for Sansa to wear clothing as form-fitting as possible.

“He’s just getting ready.”

“Cutting it a bit fine, isn’t he?” she raises an eyebrow in a fashion learned from their mother, to carefully demonstrate how much that displeases her.

“I know,” he waves off her concern, “he’ll be ready, I’m just happy he could get the leave in the first place.”

Sansa shrugs, obviously, completely unbothered, “well, there has to be some perks to being a Captain, I suppose. Make sure to offer your thanks to her Majesty’s Army in your prayers.”

Her brother hums at her sarcasm, taking a sip from his flask. He appraises her with a wry look on his face, tipping his head back in her direction, “he is home for a while you know, his last tour is over.”

“I wouldn’t even know where Captain Snow’s _home_ is these days, Robb,” she says, far too sweetly to be polite.

She should be leaving now. Margaery would need help getting into her gown. Time was ticking, but she maybe – just a little bit – needed to hear what Robb had to say.

“London mostly, other side of the river to you and me, but London still, plus weekend digs in St Ives, but I suppose that’s what happens when you are a fancy officer in the British Army.”

“Says the man who probably told him to buy a place in the West Country. Seems a bit silly to have two places when you barely live in either,” she smiles at the sheepish look adorning his face that is so familiar to her own, “look Robb, I don’t know why you think I’m interested…”

“Ha! You two have _always_ been interested, since we were bloody children,” he actually laughs at her, the infuriating fool.

Its annoying how right he is, but Robb has always been that way. They _have_ always been interested, but so has everyone else. The _will they/wont they_ aspect of the Jon and Sansa saga reads like every awful sitcom she has ever seen.

In the sitcoms the couple always get together in the end, but real life is different.

“Don’t be such a beast,” she replies haughtily.

“I noticed you didn’t deny it, anyway, I know something happened between you both before he went marching off to become the next Horatio Nelson.”

“Nothing happened Robb, exactly nothing, and Nelson was in the Navy, not the Army… you would break our fathers’ heart if he heard you say such an obviously silly thing.”

“Fine,” he says, “keep your secrets,” before adding in a whispered grumble, “but I know something definitely happened.

Robb’s wrong though, because _nothing_ happened between them all those years ago before he left for Sandhurst. She didn’t chase him down on the platform at a train station and kiss him furiously like her life depended on it. He didn’t turn up at her office wearing his uniform to sweep her off her feet. Those kinds of events are saved for the movies. It was all very amicable. All very boring.

They’ve both had dreams come true since then, she designs wedding dresses, her best friend will be wearing one of them on this very day, and he became an Officer in the Army, just like he always wanted, but before that, nothing happened, not a single thing, and maybe that’s half the problem.


	2. Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has thought about her often, more than he would care to admit over the last few years. He’s even got a picture of her that he takes on tour with him along a few others of those he cares about, like a lovesick sop in an old movie. The memories of her, and even the picture of her captured in carbon and ink does her little justice. Sansa Stark is beautiful.  
> Beautiful, in hindsight doesn’t seem a good enough word.
> 
> *
> 
> Jon and Sansa meet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy, dear hearts. 
> 
> *

Aside from the agonising build up to this moment, months and weeks of it, on the morning of Robb and Marge’s wedding he has had little time to worry about the eventuality of seeing her.

Maybe that’s what you get for finally turning up by the skin of his teeth just an hour before the ceremony. Some Best Man. Alas, he is used to being at the mercy of a schedule decided by those above him. He’s just glad he is between tours and can be here for Robb. What he isn’t glad for, is the existential crisis going on in his head.

He finally sees her as she proceeds Margaery down the aisle.

They place they’ve chosen for the wedding is amazing, one of those Georgian estates that you see in old films with Judy Dench in the lead role. It’s perfect, down to the sun that glows above the manicured lawn and spring flowers framing either side of the aisle. There aren’t many people who could pull off a wedding outside in April, but Margaery is evidently one of them.

He is failing to conjure any more adjectives in his head, because the day itself is of little consequence to him the moment _she_ starts to make her way down the aisle.

He has thought about her often, more than he would care to admit over the last few years. He’s even got a picture of her that he takes on tour with him along a few others of those he cares about, like a lovesick sop in an old movie. The memories of her, and even the picture of her captured in carbon and ink does her little justice. Sansa Stark is beautiful.

Beautiful, in hindsight doesn’t seem a good enough word.

Everything about her just seems… _more_. He can’t remember how long exactly its been since he’d seen her, but everything about her just seems magnified. Her hair looks redder, but darker at the same time, like burnt copper. Her skin is perfect, begging to be touches, whisper light, as pale and creamy as the white roses and gypsophelia she holds in her hands. He can’t bare to think about the dress she’s wearing, so he resolutely ignores the glaring truth that she’s fucking gorgeous as he allows a moment or two to lose himself in her wide, blue eyes.

Her eyes haven’t once met his as she makes the long walk towards them. She’s doing this on purpose, of that he is sure. It’s so typically like Sansa to ignore him. She’s always been very good at pretending this thing between them isn’t a thing at all. They’ve both done their best at that over the years, to the hurt of the other. It’s a defence mechanism, she’s much better at controlling her emotions than he is, and really, the fact that she is acting like he doesn’t exist should infuriate him, she’s always been good at riling him up, but honestly, the mere truth that she is doing so shows how much she has been thinking, and maybe worrying about this moment too. It means she cares, and that in itself is a great big pat on the back for Jon, so he just smiles.

Well, it’s more of a smirk really. She only spares him a glance when she leans forward to kiss Robb’s cheek, looking over her brothers’ shoulder for a second and not a moment more, but its enough.

Its fiercely apparent that in the years they have ignored one another that everything and absolutely nothing has changed.

Existential crisis aside, the ceremony is as many of these things are, rather lovely. Margaery is the consummate vision in one of Sansa’s lace dresses, the perfect _not-so-blushing_ bride, he would hate to think of the thing that would actually make Marge blush. The registrar has a rather hilarious case of hay fever, which he is sure to hark back to in his speech later. When the guests are soberly asked if anyone here knows any lawful reason why the bride and groom cannot be wed, someone, who interestingly enough sounds remarkably like Theon shouts out _it should have been me_ , much to everyone’s delight.

Jon leads the applause and catcalls when the new Mr and Mrs Stark share their first kiss, before ushering them down the aisle. Jon’s an army man, he knows a thing or two about tradition, so he offers his arm to Sansa to escort her back down the aisle to where he hopes a copious amount of booze awaits them. He isn’t surprised when she slips her hand into the crux of his elbow, she has always been to consummate good girl after all. He offers neither a word or turn of a phrase, but their eyes slide to one another the odd step or two, and he is happy to let this, the invisible thing that draws them together, to thrum and thrive, unaddressed and foolish between them.

In true Tyrell style, an army of waiting staff burdened with trays he is certain is loaded with really fucking good champagne proceed their path, as does Ned Stark, who opens his arms to Sansa, looking far too misty eyed this early in the day. Jon will happily give up her arm to her dear papa, who she adores, he know they will have to speak soon, she almost promises it, because before she removed her arm from his, she squeezes his bicep once before folding herself into her fathers arms. It thrills him more than he cares to admit.

It’s not till a little while later that they speak. Canapes and champagne have been passed around the lawn of the rose garden, as a string quartet plays ironic classical arrangements of Queen and David Bowie. They have been called away by the wily photographer, off to the side of Robb and Marge as they have their photo taken. Jon and Sansa wait to be called to join them as they stand under the English oak tree that dominates the landscape, a great, sweeping, lush thing that looks like it has stood since the Norman Conquest. Its branches dip low in places around them, leaves rustling lightly in the breeze, and despite being not a hundred yards from a ten dozen wedding guests, most of them friends and family, it feels oddly like they are completely alone.

“I’m surprised you wore regimental dress,” she says softly, glancing over to the happy couple and the photographer who is strangely enough now rolling across the grass to capture them.

He huffs a laugh, she’s not really surprised, she’s just grasping at an opener which isn’t too heavy for either of them, but the day is still young.

“Your dad asked,” he murmurs, and that’s true enough, he had asked as Ned and not as Major Stark, but Jon knows an order when he sees one, Ned’s in regimentals too, so are half a dozen other guests. There is safety in his uniform, in the brass and polished silver, insignia a beacon of the path he chose.

“It suits you,” she casts him a look sideways, “although, I am shocked to see you still have all four limbs attached, _my darling Captain_.”

He thrown off track, firstly by the way she has turned and is raking her eyes up and down him unashamedly, making him feel like he is standing there in his skivvies, but secondly, by the way she calls him _my darling_ , just like she always used too, when they were younger before such words meant a thing. She always had sweet little endearments for everyone, Robb was her _bobbin_ , Theon was _sweet-bunny_. It wasn’t the _darling_ that always got him, it was the **_my_**. He’d never been anyone’s anything before her.

“Well,” he stutters only briefly, “all appendages are present and correct, I’m sorry if that disappoints you,” he stands a little straighter, suddenly feeling like he is on parade and not basking in the dappled light that tinkers its way through the leaves of the old English oak that has become their own.

“Oh, Jon,” she smiles her beautiful fucking smile, and tilts her head at him, he cannot decipher if its in sympathy or humour, “you could never be a disappointment.”

It’s a little different to their usual barbed and jovial tact with one another. Its easy to flirt with her, always has been. Their conversation was often a mix between comedy and frustration, but this isn’t that. He suddenly misses the safety of their old way.

But then again, he shouldn’t have expected for everything to be the same.

It’s that moment, of course, that the photographer calls for her. She turns away without a second thought to him and begins making her way over to Robb and Marge, and as lovely as it is to watch her walk away in her slip of a dress, he can’t bare it at the same time.

“Sans,” he speaks without thought, and she doesn’t turn back, she just offers the twist of her head and silently waits him out, “save me a dance,” he continues.

“Of course, it’s to be expected,” she says so softly that it is almost lost on the wind the flutters the waves of her hair as it spills over her shoulder and down her half-bared back.

Damn expectations. Damn tradition.

“No, the one after that. Save me one just for us,” he says seriously.

She turns her head back away from him now, tipping her head back as a breathy laugh escapes her throat and she gently shakes her head to the cloud dabbled sky.

“I’ll make no promises, but I’ll see what I can do Captain Snow,” she calls over her shoulder as she walks slowly away from him.

He smiles to himself, because despite her assurances that she couldn’t promise him, that’s exactly what it sounded like.


	3. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa would quite happily never have another crumb pass her lips a day in her life if she could take one bite out of Jon's delectable form, but it just won’t do, because that would interfere in her plans to continue to display her careful façade of indifference, bullshit that it is.
> 
> *
> 
> A wedding breakfast, speeches, and a game of one-upmanship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter a day? What is happening?

Sansa has helped to plan Margaery and Robb’s wedding with a meticulous eye, from beginning to end. She has made her living designing wedding dresses, for goodness sake. By the time the guests settle in their spindle backed ivory chairs in the Orangery attached to the back of the Manor for the wedding breakfast, everything has gone rather splendidly.

She even thinks she even managed to keep a cool mystery about her persons during her two-minute conversation with the Best Man, well just about.

The wedding breakfast is a triumph. She carefully negotiated a slow roasted lamb shank with wild-berry jus in her white dress, which deserves a pat on the back in itself. Jon even offers her his tart tatin, but she dare not give him the satisfaction of eating it, he always knew she had a love of sweet things.

Their good luck, which is of course down to her and her friends fastidious planning comes to an abrupt end about the time of the speeches. Now, let’s keep in mind that at this stage of the day, according to Sansa’s schedule, at around 2.30pm precisely, many a guest has now had three glasses of really fucking good champagne and half a bottle of wine each, so really, the rest of the day is out of her control.

Her first _pinching-the-bridge-of-her-nose_ moment comes when the charming albeit blundering Mace Tyrell opens the speeches. He’s wearing a kilt, which is the first issue. The Tyrell’s hail from Somerset, nearly as far south as south goes, with not a drop of Celtic blood in their flowery bones, so she is unsure why he is currently wearing the tartan which she thinks belongs to Clan Campbell, but then again he had always been a bit eccentric.

Mr Tyrell opens his speech by stating his lack of surprise that Marge had chosen Robb for her husband, his seemingly angelic daughter had married her first love after all, Sansa barely resisted swilling her sauvignon blanc across the room. The poor sweet summer child. If only he knew his seemingly angelic daughter had actually propositioned Sansa the first night they met, much to their shared delight, Sansa gently turned her down before introducing her to her brother, and Sansa has had his eternal thanks ever since.

Marge’s father then goes on to somehow divert the speech into why everyone should vote for the Labour Party at the next election, which is ironic considering Marge has definitely shagged a current Member of Parliament for the Conservatives during her posh-boy phase at Uni. Luckily, Granny Olenna puts a pause on the shit show by standing up and bidding the room to charge their glasses to her darling granddaughter and her new husband, thankfully saving the room from any further tripe from Mace Tyrell’s mouth.

Sansa has interestingly been sat next to Jon at the top table. This is an utter social faux pas, she knows she should be sat next to her father, she is certain of this because she helped to finalise the seating plan, but evidently her ghastly brother and ghastlier best friend have interfered with her carefully concocted spreadsheets. She cannot bear to be upset about it though, Jon is quite delicious in his regimental dress, so much so, that the good Major’s daughter had forgotten she was a pacifist when she stood next to him under the great English oak out on the lawn. Ok, delicious is an understatement… she would quite happily never have another crumb pass her lips a day in her life if she could take one bite out of Jon's delectable form, but it just won’t do, because that would interfere in her plans to continue to display her careful façade of indifference, bullshit that it is.

She isn’t indifferent at all. She’s rather hysterical in truth, which is rather a problem.

She isn’t sure when she became such a sympathetic soul towards the man of much of her romantic teenage torment, but as Robb laments what a beautiful bride Marge is to their guests, and how in love with her he is, to a room full of oohs and ahhs and the odd sniffle from many a motherly matron, she can see Jon rubbing his palms across his knees, and not in the frenzied way she likes to imagine on a gloomy and lonely evening, no, it’s all rather anxious. He has taken his note cards out of his pocket a grand total of three agonising times. His incessant twitching is making _her_ nervous, and thankfully due to the patriarchal view on the horror that would be women speaking in public, she only has to sit there and look pretty.

She stands at the end of Robb’s toast along with everyone else and sips daintily at her champagne flute. She uses it to hide behind as she leans slightly towards Jon.

“Relax, _my darling Captain_ ,” she whispers, she even offers a small but genuine smile, one which he can only reply to with a grimace.

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbles.

“Yes, lucky me. Just imagine that you’re under enemy fire, then you will feel right at home,” she drawls as they return to their seats, before turning to him with the sweetest smile on her face that she could possible muster, “and failing that… just picture me naked.”

The poor, delectable fool looks half aghast and half furious as he glares at her.

“You fucking minx,” he mutters under his breath. She has always loved getting one up on him, and she feels like the cat that got the canary as he paws at his trouser leg once more before huffing out a tortured laugh.

His cue is given by the Toast Master and Jon stands to take the mic, to too much wolf whistling and rather offensive heckles from their friends, but all of that is drowned out as he leans down to whisper in her ear, breath ghosting her neck for effect as he says, “Sansa naked it is, then.”

She misses the first few moments of his speech, due to the bloody white noise between her ears and as she tries to simmer the blush staining her porcelain cheeks. She likes to give as good as she gets but she always hates it when her own behaviour comes to bite her on the arse.

When she finally manages to get her rapidly rising chest and brain to catch up with one another, Jon’s speech is as lovely as anyone with half a brain cell would imagine. There isn’t a cliché in the house, he doesn’t mention Shakespeare, or the stag do, he does, however, talk about true love, and how he has seen it only twice in his life, once between Ned and Cat and the second time with Robb and Marge, and that true love is evidently a Stark trait, learned young at the apron strings of Catelyn Stark nee Tully and the boot straps of Eddard Stark.

She loves and hates that in equal measure.

It makes her feel immeasurably sad that he’s only witnessed true love twice in his life, but then it makes her feel positively catatonic when she realises that for her, it is exactly the same.

The blinks the sting back from her eyes with enough time to bat her eyelashes with grace as he praises her for her dresses and her beauty as the most exquisite bridesmaid he has ever seen. He needn’t bother, she knows he has never found her difficult to look at. She has always wondered though what it is about her that enchants him so, her pale skin? Her eyes? She knows she has a rather cracking pair of legs. She always imagined it was her hair, she even heard there was a dalliance with a red-headed Corporal when he first joined up, so maybe there is merit in that. She wonders how the two of them compare.

“… and I think here would be a good place to add something about how it is tradition for the Best Man to run off with the Chief Bridesmaid…”

Thankfully Arya and Theon, her dependable little sweethearts, lead the charge of pantomime boos and hisses.

“…but,” he continues dryly over the abusive din, “I rather like my testicles attached to my body, so we will leave that for another day.”

Laughter, clink-clink, cheers for the bride and groom, et cetera. It’s a rather promising, witty and sweet speech for someone who was on the verge of an aneurism not ten minutes ago.

“Nicely done, Captain,” she softly coos as he returns to his seat, throwing his arm around the back of her chair, cheeks flushed and cheery from not completely fucking up his speech.

“That almost sounds like a compliment Sans,” he says with a smirk, eyes dipping briefly to the hollow of her throat before gliding back up to her eyes, “it worked at least…”

“What did?”

“Picturing you naked,” he whispers, leaning closer again. Its rather predictable though, she could have seen it coming a mile off, and she’s prepared this time, so her traitorous blush at his close proximity is firmly stayed, and she is a stubborn creature, she has let him off far too easy thus far.

“Oh, _my darling_ ,” she turns to look at him like he is the silliest, sweetest fool she has ever met, “I have it on good authority that picturing me naked always works.”


	4. Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The drinking hour begins...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scotch, teasing, old friends, older worries.

Jon, despite his natural awkwardness, has safely navigated the canapes, wedding breakfast and thank whatever gods that exist, his Best Man’s speech. He somehow cannot comprehend that it wasn’t an utter shit show. He’s feeling punch proud, which is only magnified by the two whiskey’s Theon has bullied him into having so early into the evening.

The one thing he continuously fails to navigate, is Sansa Stark. It’s always been like this between them. He half thinks if they ever got together it would be somewhat anticlimactic after all the years of cat and mouse behind them. He also knows that’s a lie. It would be _fucking sensational._ Yet, its hard to think about what will likely never be when every time he thinks he’s got one up on her, she puts him right back in his place, his place being a perpetual state of _wanting_ her.

She’s right of course, always bloody is, picturing her naked had worked in distracting him. He wished it wasn’t so, but it’s not like it’s the first time. Aside from her usual jostling, he knows that something isn’t quite right. She’s almost too different. The glowing sweetness under the façade doesn’t seem to linger anymore. He adores her strength and the unabashed way she acts like she hasn’t a care for anything or anyone, but that once youthful vulnerability of a young woman who just wanted to be loved doesn’t shine behind her eyes as it once did.

He wonders why that torments him so.

He didn’t miss the little jab for his benefit too.

_I have it on good authority that picturing me naked always works._

Despite outward perceptions, he isn’t a complete idiot. He knows what she’s saying between the lines. There have been others. They have had her in the one way he hadn’t been brave enough to, no matter what she wanted all those years ago on the last day they saw one another.

He’s fucking jealous. Of course, there have been others, its been what, five, six years maybe? She isn’t eighteen anymore. Sansa Stark would be the last person to stop living her life because she believed he hadn’t wanted her enough, pretty and foolish sweetheart that she is, she would carry on just to spite him. Rationally, he knows she’s likely moved on, he had too, for a time at least, but jealously is hardly rational, and it eats away under the surface, his regimental dress suddenly stifling under the glowing condemnation of his own idiocy.

Would anything have been different? No. he cannot regret the decision he made all those years ago.

Much of his duties for the day, are thankfully over. His speech has been spoken, the cake had been cut and Robb had danced with his bride whilst whispering sweet nothings into her ear to the words of Rod Stewart. God above, why is it always Rod Stewart? This is the part of weddings he really enjoys, drinking, dancing, catching up with friends who he really doesn’t get to see often enough, which is how he finds himself propping up the bar with Theon Greyjoy.

“You must be in hell, Snow,” he quips, gleefully smirking at him from over the rim of his glass as he leans against the bar lazily. The ever confident Theon is that friend we all have, the type where you really have no clue how you became friends in the first place, but then they just become a normality in your life, a constant presence, like being drunk by lunch on Christmas Day, he always rolls around again, but for his sins, Jon bloody adores the man.

“How so?” he gives in, giving Theon the bare minimum of the attention he is desperate for.

“Well,” he says, taking a long sip from his tumbler, the dramatic fuck, “I’ve seen the dress too. I have eyes…”

Now this is the awkward part of the whole Jon/Sansa saga. Their friends are family, and their family are their friends, so, they’ve seen the whole silly non-thing play out over the years, and both of them subconsciously know almost immediately that Theon is talking about Sansa, though he is not likely to admit that, so he just rolls his eyes, and then rolls his shoulders for good measure, and completely ignores him, turning back to the bar to try and flag the barman.

“I apologise Jon…”

“What for?” he asks without looking at him.

“For this… its just,” he pauses, and Jon can hear the mischief in Theon’s voice, it’s the same voice he heard when he once convinced Jon and Robb it would be a good idea to release five chickens, numbered 1,2,3,4 and 6 respectively, loose around their school on their last day, and happily watch the chaos as the teachers tried to find the allusive chicken numbered 5 which didn’t exist. “…it’s just too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Jon pinches his eyes shut, opening his mouth to issue a warning, but it is too late.

“Oh, _ribbons_!”

Ah, there is little shock in his actions, as Theon calls out to Sansa, or _ribbons_ , as he has affectionately called her since she had skinned knees and was sharper than them all at the age of twelve, who just happens to be gliding past them like an ethereal nymph in the near-by vicinity.

“ _Sweet-bunny_ ,” she sighs in a bored tone, sidling up to Theon, linking her arm through his and resting her head innocently on his shoulder, “well, don’t you two make a handsome couple,” she sing-songs at the pair of them.

“Drink, Sans?” Jon asks for want of something better to say.

“I’d love one, Captain,” she teases, “scotch, if you would be so kind.”

In a moment of weakness, Jon allows the shock to show on his face at her choice, which of course, judging from the mocking quirk of both her eyebrows and her lips has failed to go unnoticed.

“Do you think I have shocked the Captain, _sweet-bunny_?” she whispers conspiratorially, “the little girl has turned into a woman and drinks big-boy drinks now, the horror!”

Theon rubs her bare arm soothingly.

“Now _ribbons_ , I don’t think anyone could accuse you being a little girl in a dress like that.”

“You are sweet to me,” she smiles.

“I know, dearest, loveliest Sansa, now, maybe later we can have a dance and it may be the very moment, as we sway to the sounds of Billy Joel, that you finally realise you are in love with me…” he jokes, not taking his eyes from Jon’s scowling form once.

“Dear me, my dance card is getting quite full Mr Darcy, Jon has reserved me for two already, I suppose I can save you the last set before the carriages are called.”

“I have no idea what you just said to me, all I heard is that Snow has two dances and now I have half a mind to challenge him to a fist fight,” he punched Jon lightly on the shoulder.

“…and only one of those dances is an obligation,” he muttered.

Sansa twisted her lips to stop herself from laughing and flicked her wrist in a blasé fashion before dipping her head in acknowledgement as Jon slides the scotch across the bar to her, “thank you, _my darling_ ,” she sighed, before taking a sip and briefly distracting him as she ran her tongue across her bottom lip, “that’s rather lovely.”

He likes being teased by her, and god knows Theon has spent the entirety of their acquaintance winding him up, the insufferable fuck, but its all been rather one sided, with Theon and Sansa arm in arm, its almost as if they’re in cahoots. He knows that isn’t the case, Sansa would never stoop so low as to need a second in her vow to torment him, she doesn’t even need it, standing there in her white dress, one hand wrapped around a glass of scotch that he adores the taste of, though he knows it would be all the nicer from her lips, and the other hand delicately sliding out of Theon’s arm to rest in the dip of her waist.

He’s almost at the end of his tether with it all though, this easy rhythm they have found so naturally, a jab from her, a quip from him, one-two, one-two, and so it continues. Its like nothing has changed, which is true, because there was nothing there to change before, and there is nothing now. He doesn’t know why he expected it to be different though, he aches with the knowledge that there must be something else under her artfully constructed demeanour of inconsequence. Its his own fault, the coward, for turning up without a plan aside from the speech in his pocket, in hopes that he could avoid any awkwardness at seeing her again, but there are elephants in this beautiful and ornate ballroom of the Georgian manor house in the countryside just outside of London, a great, stampeding heard of elephants, which he refuses for them both to ignore any longer.

“Drink up, Sans,” he says quietly, as he slams his own glass back on the bar, “I want the first of those dances, if you’d do me the honour?”

He has said it as seriously as he can manage, staring at her beautiful face, and he recognises the moment she realises that this is real, that he isn’t playing with her anymore, as her smirk drops and her eyes soften.

Her cheeks flush slowly too, as he continues to stare at her for longer than is polite. Its such a lovely sight.

Looking at her is like opening the curtains at dawn on a new summer’s morning, dew-dotted, hazy, cream-blue sky and milky horizon.

Theon could disappear into dust before their very eyes and neither of them would know it.

She lifts her glass to her lips, tipping her head back to swallow the remains of her scotch in one, delicate go, as his eyes follow to bob of her throat. He holds his hand out as she slides the glass back onto the bar, licks her lips once more, glances back to his hand… and then takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is the nothing-thing that happened between them all those years ago? I wonder, what did Sansa want that Jon didn't... lets find out my little hearts.


	5. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa share a dance or several.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear hearts. 
> 
> Updates are short and sweet and slow. I have been beavering away with my colleagues at NHS Nightingale, having successfully clapped and cheered as our first patients went home the other day, its tiring and wonderful and my life has been flooding with kindness. I hope yours has too. 
> 
> I hope you are all taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. My cat has been giving me the cold shoulder for being out so much so I might leave my laptop open so she can sit on it. It's the little things. 
> 
> Take care.
> 
> Rose  
> xo

The don’t speak, for once, as Jon leads her across the ornate parquet flooring, crisscrossing like an ominous representation of the merry dance they have done around one another for all these years. His hand, half-pulling her quicker than she would like, is so warm in hers. Hers is cold, as it always is, just like much else about her she supposes.

They don’t look at one another either, as he turns himself towards her in the middle of the ballroom and drags her towards his hard chest, one hand still in his whilst the other slides slowly around her waist on onto her back, where her dress dips low and the smooth, pale skin of her spine burns under his touch. Where she is cold, he is always so, _so_ warm.

She can feel him looking over her shoulder, across the floor to a smattering of other couples as they dance around them. She stares at his throat, dipping her gaze. The dance floor is quite crowded, and she is glad for it, so they can hide amongst the happy lovers and relatives of old that move together like nothing is wrong, likely nothing is, for them at least, but for Sansa, everything is wrong, it all feels wrong.

Not his touch though. That, interestingly enough, feels right. It feels perfect.

She’s half furious with herself for deigning the band with a set list that included Landslide. Apparently, she cannot even have Fleetwood Mac anymore without it torturing her for years to come.

She’s an idiot.

She’s taken it too far, their incessant teasing, the flirting. It had all been too easy to fall back into, and now here they are, unable to even look at one another as they dance like lovers do, when really, they are just Jon and Sansa.

Silly girls who play with fire get their fingers burnt, and Jon has always scalded her the most.

“You look…”

Sansa startles at his voice, abrupt and awkward as he once was in adolescence, and she flicks a cautionary glance at him, and she can see he’s searching for something as his eyes scan over her face.

She rolls her lips together, bravely meeting his eye, but he doesn’t finish what he started.

“So do you,” she mutters, as if she had any clue what he was going to say, “but then I always did love a man in uniform,” she smiles, coy and feline-like. Its only been two minutes but she’s missed their usual banter.

He offers her a hum in response and a quirk of his dark eyebrows but nothing else, he doesn’t take the bait and then it’s back to silence.

She glances around them feeling slightly panicked. The other guests look happy and jovial, cheeks flushed from the _really fucking good champagne_ and the type of laughter that hurts your stomach. Its noisy and joyful and everything a wedding should be, but between the two of them, the room could be empty.

He looks good, he always has, but its different. He’s a man now, he’d been in his early twenties the last time she had seen him but he’s closer to thirty now, and he just seems like such a _man,_ she knows that sounds ridiculous in her head and she has half a mind to whack herself around the skull with her own hand, but its just… a lot. His years in the forces have filled him out, her hand is resting on his broad, hard shoulder which is evidence enough as the muscle flexes beneath her fingertips. She can tell he’s on leave too, because stubble litters his cheeks despite his regimental dress, the naughty Captain, Major Stark must have something to say about that but she doesn’t mind, she likes it, half the women and men in the room like it too, she imagines.

He is the walking epitome of all of her fantasies. The men she thinks about in her mind always look like him, dark and strong and just aloof enough to hurt her feelings, but she’s always chosen the opposite, someone soft and smooth and fair, and any therapist worth a penny could dissect that little nugget.

It’s his eyes though, his storm in a teacup eyes that she’s always loved the most. She’s liked the rest of him for years, but its his eyes she loves with every fibre of her being.

The sound of Fleetwood Mac has faded away into something else as dance number one turns into dance number two. Normally she would make a quip about him _having too much of a good thing_ or _being in negative credit with her_ or something equally sarcastic and unfunny, but silence reigns supreme and eats away at the distance between them as they stare at one another.

She keeps her eyes on his, but his she notices, his November-grey pools dip down the length of her neck as his fingers toy with the end of her hair that trail to the small of her back, his touch is so light she suspects he thinks she cannot even feel it. You can always feel fire though.

She has tried to play their little game with him, but he isn’t having any of it.

He is looking at her like he is torn between wringing her neck or throwing her over his shoulder, and its _too_ much.

“Jon,” she whispers in warning.

She feels his fingers flex into the small of her back, her skin bare and tingling under his fingers. It could be the first time she has said his name today, she isn’t too sure. She normally doesn’t, _my darling Captain_ is safe, his name whispered in the dark is too real.

“We should talk about it…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she seethes, cutting him off with a glare, “its been years Jon.”

“Six,” he starts.

“Exactly, six. Ancient history,” she presses her lips together as he turns them together, pulling them closer.

“Not for me, I think about it all the time Sans.”

“I couldn’t care less,” she drawls. Liar, the room breaths around her, pulsing to the beat of the instrument the band so artfully plays, liar, liar, _liar_.

He laughs then which only makes her angrier, so she does what she always does when she is annoyed, she fixes her face with the most irritating and apathetic smile she can manage and bats her eyelashes at him like she’s half a beat away from swooning where she stands.

“I would rather face enemy fire than your indifference, Stark,” he huffs.

“Oh, don’t tell me I’m bigger and scarier than all those trained killers at Sandhurst, Captain, you will upset my feminine disposition,” she croons sweetly.

“Stop playing with me and be serious for one second,” he rolls his eyes.

“Why? I was _serious_ six years ago Jon. You weren’t interested enough…”

“You’re joking?” he asks darkly, voice so low she can barely hear it as he hauls her against him, as they sway together far too closely to be friends, as his hand dips lower on her back and she clutches at his shoulder for something to hold onto for dear life, “I was only _serious_ , that’s why I did what I did,” he whispers as his breath skates against her ear.

“Jon, you didn’t do anything, that’s the problem,” she argues, and she feels the huff of his breath against her again. It’s really his own fault, putting his neck so close to her, its far too easy to deliver the killing blow when his jugular is right there, “does it kill you?” she whispers, “do you regret it? Do you wonder who the next was? My first, when it could have been you? Do you want to know if he’s in this room right now?”

He pulls back from her slightly and she can see she’s gone too far, but he doesn’t glare at her, or curse her very name for her pettiness and her nastiness, no, he just smiles lightly, so softly that is shows in the corner of his eyes more than on his lips.

Even now, he wont shout and scream at her and call her every name under the sun. He never would.

“Yes, it kills me. No, I don’t regret it, and honestly Sans, I hope there is a man out there who can make you happy,” he whispers back, “and maybe that man is in this room,” and he pulls her closer against him as he says the words, “maybe it’s me,” he chuckles dryly.

She rolls her eyes and pulls her face back from his, so he can really admire the way her pupils disappear into the back of her skull.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Jon,” she scoffs

“I’m not, maybe, for once in our lives, I’m being deadly serious,” he says quietly.

She takes in his face and realises he is serious, completely serious. The usual arch of his eyebrow when he is being sarcastic is absence, and his eyes are gentle and have her whole attention and its just so different to how they usually are with one another.

“Stop it,” she says gently.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that, talking to me like this…”

“Maybe I’m bored of the perpetual back and forth,” he bristled, “look Sansa, I know I didn’t leave things in the best way back then, but let me explain now…” he ignores her scoff of incredulity as he continues, “I know I hurt you, but you were so young, I was leaving for Sandhurst and you had your own future, things you wanted for yourself, I wasn’t about to put a stop to that…”

He’s so desperate to get his explanation across that he doesn’t observe her shaking her head gently from side to side in stunned shock, halting their steps and glaring at him as she battles to mask her fury.

He is just so _fucking_ wrong, the bloody idiot. She’s desperately indignant, so much so that she can barely see straight as his mouth continues to ramble about _sacrifice_ and the _right time_ and how he could never hurt someone like her, someone who means so much to him… and its just such bullshit, classic Jon _bloody-noble_ Snow bullshit.

“You’re unbelievable,” she says, barely meeting his eyes, because why should she bother? She should have known better than to think they could flirt their way through today with another and then come out the other side unscathed.

She pulls her arms from his and turns away before she can take in his reaction, walking away from him without a care for how it looks, leaving him alone in the middle of a Georgian ballroom, during the middle of a song, grasping the skirts of her dress in one hand so she can flee all the quicker before swiping a bottle of the really _fucking good champagne_ that looks as lonely as she feels from a table in her path, storming from the room as she reflects that maybe Jon Snow doesn’t know her at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, neither of these two are perfect, huh? 
> 
> Is anyone interested in seeing a flashback, or shall we just jump ahead with continuing the story? Either way we will find more clarity on what actually went down, or didn't go down, if you get my meaning, all those years ago...
> 
> Discuss...


	6. Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon follows Sansa into the hazy evening for a champagne fuelled confrontation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I left you hanging there for a short minute. One must apologise.  
> This the penultimate chapter, followed by a *hopefully* decently scandalous conclusion and maybe a short epilogue (because I'm a sucker for that). 
> 
> I hope you are all keeping well and happy and sane and surrounded with love.

He numbly watches her retreat for a few seconds as Sansa walks away from him with her cold fury for company and her skirts swirling with indignation, before taking up a stride and following her, foregoing any dignity he has as he half barrels into Robb and Margaery as they share an intimate embrace on the dancefloor, he offers a half mumbled apology but he is already a few paces away and he knows they are likely smirking at his disappearing form.

He loses her for a few moments in the throng of wedding guests, ties loosened, and clutch bags abandoned to tabletops as the night really picks up a revelled pace. Everyone is in jovial spirits, everyone except for him and Sansa.

He’s done something very wrong. He knows that much. Sansa loves confrontation, she thrives off the victory of her witty comebacks and their mutual tete-a-tete, so the reality of her walking… no, storming away from him is very un-Sansa. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her lose her cool composure to this extent, not even that night on her eighteenth birthday when she had treated his refusal with calm indifference and looked at him with such condemned pity, so in essence, he knows he has truly fucked up.

He picks up his pace as he makes it to the impressive open staircase as he catches the flash of white silk belonging to the short train of her gown fly out of the French doors that lead to the stone veranda and the estate beyond.

The evening is dappled in hazy lights, casting the flagstones of the patio darker, and the creeping ivy matches the unsettled feeling in his chest. Its easy to spot her, but then again she has always been a homing beacon to him, gliding down the stone steps that lead to the rose garden with greater grace than he thinks possible considering her temper and the shoes she is wearing but he continues to follow her like her lap dog.

She loves roses, they are her favourite, especially the whites and the ivories that match the fabric caressing her body, but she pays them no mind, hair dancing behind her with every step she takes as the evening darkens around her. He comes to a stop at the end of the pebbled path framed by a guard of roses, just to look at her as she finally ceases her journey under the old English Oak where they had first reunited earlier that day.

The tree still dominates the lawn, the centurion sentinel that stands over the woman who has never been far from his mind, now though he notices the trunk and lower branches are wrapped in thousands of fairy lights, no doubt at Sansa’s doing, that perfect girl, and the lights cast her in a green and white-gold glow, as if the moon peaks through its leaves to bless her with a silver crown. Even in her pacing and frustration as she walks back and forth before the tree, she’s a goddess he doesn’t deserve.

A steady deep breath and a flex of his cuff between his thumb and forefinger is enough to propel him towards the tree, and he cannot stop his mouth from curling as she smacks her hand against the gnarled truck and appears to swear at it in French under her breath.

“I should have known you wouldn’t give me a minutes peace,” she mutters quietly, her back still to him as she clenches her now grazed hand in a fist from where she took her ire out on the knobbled bark before them.

“What did the tree ever do to you?” he asked quietly.

“Well, why hasn’t it got a bench around it, or something?” she says, her voiced laced with that evident distain she is so very good at, he would bet his medals that her nose is wrinkling in distaste if only he could see her face, “as if I would sit on the grass in this dress,” she huffs, lifting the bottle of champagne in her other hand to her lips, before deciding against it, huffing once more and lowering it to her side.

She slowly turns to face him, and he feels his own fists clench at the sight of her. He knows that firm set of her jaw that she so proudly displays to him now quite well, but there is no escaping the sadness behind her eyes, how the watery midnight pools glimmer like a bruise in bath water, and he did this, he made her look that way, and suddenly its six years ago, as he stands before the same girl who at eighteen had looked exactly the same, no matter the feigned meaninglessness she had worn then or now.

“We’re terrible at this…” she says suddenly, and all he can do is blink at her like the idiot he feels, “at talking, at all of this,” and she waves between them with her free hand, before holding the bottle of champagne out to him at arm’s length.

“I know…”

They stand in silence as he accepts the bottle from her hands, he takes a generous swig, taking her in as the bubbles dance down his throat. She wraps her arms tightly around her middle and stares out across the rose garden and back up to the house. You can hear the thrum of the band and revellers inside, the lights waltz from the high glass windows of the ballroom and laughter echoes on the veranda as people escape the heat of the party now in full, typical Tyrell-swing.

He lets the silent linger, mainly because he isn’t as brave as her, he supposes that’s why he did what he did back then, but its also easier to just look at her this way, and he hasn’t looked his fill in years. She looks like one of the pretty roses that blooms in the garden just beyond the old English Oak, ethereal and lovely and encased in cream and ivory, the petals of the blooms he can make out if he squints just right. The flowers stand as ancient as she does, classically beautiful, and not for the touch of a wayward and heavy hand.

“So let me understand…” she murmurs quietly, and as he looks back to her he can no longer see the sadness so evidently gracing her face, she’s gone back to masking whatever it is she so desperately wants to hide, and it drives him to distraction, so much so that he wants to shake them both for it, “six years ago…” she swallows thickly before continuing, “on my eighteenth birthday…”

“I remember,” he whispers.

“You said…” but she pauses and tips her head back to blink at the sky.

“I know what I said…”

“We are such fucking idiots…” she sighs, and she dips her head back to face him, that anger that had so quickly vanished into sadness since returned, “just so I’m clear, because honestly Jon, you’ve even surprised me with this one,” she barks sarcastically, “you said… you did what you did because you were going away, and because you thought I was young and had my whole starry eyed future ahead of me?”

She takes a step closer and purses her lips.

“Yes,” Jon answers, as his brow furrows in confusion.

“You don’t understand, do you?” She looks at him, hands thrown out to the side in exasperation, “oh, my darling, how can you still not understand?”

“Understand what, Sansa?” he huffs, half tempted to drain the rest of the champagne from the green glass bottle.

“That you can’t save the bloody world Jon!” she explodes.

He blinks owlishly at her, opens his mouth to retort but closes it again, but she gives him no quarter.

“I’m not yours to rescue, you need to get that into your thick skull, Jon Snow, I decide… my life… my choices… it doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks they are right for me or not. Doesn’t it get tiring? You spend your every living day trying be the hero, so honourable and self-sacrificing, we love you for it Jon, but you’re just muddling through life trying to stop the world from imploding and it only makes you unhappy…”

“I’m not unhappy,” he whispers, and even he knows how half-hearted he sounds to their ears.

“Well, you don’t look _happy_ , Jon,” she sighs and takes another step closer to him, and suddenly he feels like the one who should run away, “none of the reasons you told me for turning me down all those years ago were because you didn’t like me… or you didn’t want me enough… and that’s what I thought Captain,” she whispers, “but that’s not true, is it?”

He bridges the gap between them, so close it’s a wrist flick for him to reach out and gently finger her dress where is lingers against her thighs.

“No, Sansa, that wasn’t true…”

“I don’t need you to save me Jon, I don’t need anyone to decide anything for me… and I know what I want…” she whispers, and she’s so close he can taste the champagne in the air around him, “do you know what you want?”

He has made some mistakes over the years, that much is clear, and he doubts his decision six years ago will be his last, but he’s not the type of man to make the same mistake again.

“Aye, I know what I want…” he murmurs, eyes darting everywhere, all at once, save he miss the smallest part of her.

“Then take it,” she whispers against his lips.

Jon has thought about kissing her many times over the years, if he is honest, that’s some of the more family-friendly thoughts he has had about her, but when he finally kisses Sansa Stark beneath the canopy of fairy lights under the English Oak, its not the soft and delicate brush of lips he had thought about when she was sixteen, it’s not even the embrace he had regretted not taking when she was eighteen, in her parents garden in her silver party dress.

Their first kiss is the heady give and take of two people who have been denied what they have wanted, no, what they _needed_ for too many years. It’s easy and perfect and hot as she welcomes him into the sweetness of her mouth with her lips and her tongue, and he is _so fucking stupid_ for wasting their time, for ignoring _this thing_ between them.

He’ll berate himself tomorrow, hell, he will let her tear him down for his mistakes and misjudgement over breakfast, lunch and supper, but now, as he drops the champagne bottle from his grasp and lets it thud to the grass, a glug of fizz and foam as it seeps into the roots of the old English Oak, it’s all the easier to lift her up and press her against the trunk of the tree in a handful of silk hips and thighs and freckle smattered, milk warmed skin, as they finally, thank goodness, save it kill them both, take what they want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said maybe smut... *laughs like an evil British villain*
> 
> Thank god there are bedroom at this Georgian Manor right? See you on the flip side.


	7. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their declarations under the English Oak, it had all escalated rather quickly, so quickly in fact that she had barely been able to breath the words room – now, against Jon’s mouth when he had cruelly relented his fog-inducing kisses on her willing lips.
> 
> * 
> 
> Captain Snow gets his girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A teasing of smut to draw this spring-time English frolic to a close. 
> 
> Enjoy. 
> 
> Take Care. 
> 
> Rose xx

Robb and Margaery, understandably, have been gifted the nicest rooms on the estate for their wedding night, but considering Sansa pulled together much of today’s festivities with a mere flick of her blush painted fingers, the second best rooms have gone to her. She’s no fool, and she likes pretty things. Apparently they once belonged to the lady of the manor or some such, she even knows, in the deep recesses of her mind that there is a Victorian freestanding bath that she is desperate to get her paws on, but maybe in the morning.

She knows its lovely, but she has little patience or, to put it delicately, ability, to even open her eyes at present, as Jon continues to press her up against the back of the door with his hips as he pays deliberate care to the hollow of her throat with his tongue.

After their declarations under the English Oak, it had all escalated rather quickly, so quickly in fact that she had barely been able to breath the words _room – now,_ against Jon’s mouth when he had cruelly relented his fog-inducing kisses on her willing lips.

He’d half carried her backwards, arms locked around her back as her hells skittered along the lightly pebbled path adorned with tea-lights back up to the manor, before she begged him to put her down so they could keep some semblance of dignity. She’d even mustered an indifferent smile and rested her hand in the crux of his elbow as they swept past various guests, including her rather annoying pseudo-uncle who insisted on stopping them and commenting on how flushed she looked when he kissed her cheek… it didn’t create quite the same shiver as Jon so often did. She had laughed at him as she pulled him up the stairs after he failed miserably to mask his frustration at the delay, and she huskily whispered in his ear that they had waiting six years and another minute or so wouldn’t kill him. The scolding look in his eyes would beg to differ.

She should have known this would happen, maybe she would have been better prepared if she hadn’t been so set on ignoring him for the rest of their lives, but here they are. She rather feels like one of his inferiors, some rogue Private on parade under his inspection from the way he almost reverently kisses and catalogues every inch of her throat and collarbone. This was bound to happen though when they finally gave in to one another, years and years of pent up _everything_ and they thankfully collide like a couple of horses desperate for the gallops and that first jump after being stabled for far too long. She doesn’t mind being his filly, not one bit, but that doesn’t mean she wants to make it easy for him, that isn’t _them_ after all.

“In case you were wondering… I’ve only half forgiven you,” she breathed out as she buried her fingers into his hair, “just know I was never waiting at home for you like some wretched squaddies girl.”

She feels more than hears his irritated murmur against her collar bone, as he begins muttering about _this fucking dress_ for what is likely the fifth time since he first pushed her against the tree not twenty minutes ago.

“I know, Sans,” he whispers and she shivers against the feeling of his hands ghosting from her unbound hair, down her sides to the dip of her waist and to the outside of her thighs, where he slowly takes a grip of either side of her dress and slowly starts to ruck it up into his hands.

She’s never seen him look like he does now, its lovely and dangerous to see a side of him she hasn’t witnessed even in her dreams in all these years, she wonders how many have seen him as such, eyes blown black as the sky outside, hair a desperate tangle from her and him and the sheer _want_ that marks his every feature, she doubts many have seen her Captain like this, and she’s glad for it.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, and her breath hitches at the new moniker, they both notice it, and he smiles softly at her, not in smug victory as he normally would at getting one up on her, but it’s a softer thing, a gentle rise of his lips on one side, “sweetheart,” he says again, and she swallows thickly because now she knows he’s saying it again just because she likes it, and his smile grows wider, the devilish one she is much more used too, and she’s barely registers that he has finished rucking her dress up completely, until his fingers slide and dig into the back of her thighs as he lifts her up against the door to press her deeper into it the door behind her as she wraps her legs around his waist.

“Yes, my darling,” she laughs against his mouth.

“We’ve got to have a conversation about this dress,” and he spins them around to finally, blessedly, carry her towards the bed. She whimpers against him as he deposits her just shy of it, back on her own two feet but her distress doesn’t last long as he pulls her towards him to kiss her again, deeply sinfully and she moans into his mouth as his hands skate across her bare back.

“Now, this dress…” he begins between kisses in that dark and low voice of his she loves so much, “I really, really fucking love this dress Sans,” she hums in agreement at his statement, “its so nice that when I first saw you today I was genuinely worried I was going to have a heart attack.”

“Terrible way to go, after surviving a war or two and everything, only to be killed by a dress,” she laughs as she leans her cheek against his.

“Death by Sansa Stark’s arse… I’m glad you see my point. Now, for my own health, tell me how to get the fucking thing off,” he groaned into her neck.

She does it herself, because she cannot bare for his mouth to leave hers as she kisses him again, hot and sweet and full of little puffs and whines that she knows for certain she has never made in her life. It’s a delicate descend of the zip at her side, running down to her hip and Jon wastes no time in skimming the silk down her legs to leave it in a puddle at her feet to be ignored forever.

She’s wearing nothing but her knickers, some dusty rose high legged and seam free thing, because as a designer of clothes, she would never ruin a gown like the one she has been wearing with some outrageous knicks, but from the way he steps back to look at her, all the while keeping her in his arms, as if it would pain him to part with her, she feels like she is draped in pearls. She lets him look his fill, he’s likely wanted this even longer than she has, plus the way Jon is looking at her, as his eyes seek out every freckle dusting her ribs, to each rosy nipple and dip and curve of her waist and hips, well, he makes her feel like the loveliest thing that has ever walked the earth.

She lets him tug her gently to him, flush against his chest and the feeling of the brass buttons of his uniform pressing into her skin make her arch her back like a cat in sunlight. She can easily read the litany of endearments and praise she knows he it itching to heap on her, now that he finally has her in his grasp, in all her near-nakedness, but he just embraces her, and his touch has always been far sweeter than any others so she laps it up, draws him in and clings to the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders like he is a vessel at sea in a storm, like he is her safety and her salvation.

Its wonderful and warm, the way they hold one another, as his hands skit across the dips in her back. There’s nothing sexual about it, save her breasts pressed against his chest and the ache between her legs that cannot, for the life of her, be ignored, but they hold each other like lovers of old would do, as he noses her neck and breathes her in. It doesn’t last long however, as not a moment later he pushes her back until she falls onto the bed in the middle of the room with a gasp on her lips. She holds out a hand in an attempt to draw him down to follow at her, but he just smiles gently and wordlessly shakes his head. She’s half tempted to feel self-conscious, as he stands above her at the end of the bed, standing in his regimentals, every bit the strong soldier she had always imagined him to be and stares at her, darkly, hotly, softly, but she cant bear to worry about how she looks or what he thinks, because he can see it on his face. He adores her.

She must paint some picture to him, skin as pale as a china cup filled with tea made from rosehips and hair strung around her and glowing like embers in the moonlight that slides through the windows, laying as she is against the forest green bed spread, the same colour as the leaves on the English Oak that stands beyond the old Georgian Manor, but he doesn’t say a thing, he doesn’t need to, so she merely dips her chin from where she lays, bites her lip, and slowly lets her hands run down her stomach before dipping further to start to push her underwear down.

She feels like she could raise cities to arms from the way his nostrils flare, and the hand he fiercely braces against one of the mahogany pillars of the four poster bed before he changes his mind and finishes what she started and pulls her knickers down her legs to lay carelessly on the floor beside her dress. He lets his index finger ghost her knee gently, painfully so that she would whimper if it wouldn’t give him so much satisfaction. The faintest pressure on the inside of her knee is all she needs under his touch to open her thighs to him, her lower legs still hanging of the end of the bed where her feet arch in anticipation and she could thank the Commons and the Lords when he finally, blessedly does something, and drops to his knees in front of her.

“Jon,” she sighs as his hands run up the back of her legs and his nose traces her calf.

“Jon,” she repeats, a little louder as he grips her thighs tighter and looks down at him, not that he would know, his gaze so intent on her legs and the path of nips and kisses he leaves in his wake.

“Jon, please,” she tries to rail at him, to shout and scream in frustration, but the reality is a weak and breathy and utterly wrecked whisper that he pays no mind to as he yanks her down the bed in one, quick movement, till her cunt is inches from his face and she’s certain she moans, buts its inaudible to her ears against the groan he rumbles into the soft skin of her thigh.

She’s never be able to forgive herself to not taking in his every move, she’s thought about this enough hasn’t she? Even when other men have done the very same, though none have ever made her feel so violently gone with lust and desperation as Jon does now and he’s barely even touched her, so she pushes herself up onto her elbows and drags the ball of her foot up to rest over his shoulder where she feels him shiver against her foot, still clasped in the strappy and dainty heels she was wearing earlier as his eyes leave her cunt and slowly track her flesh before their eyes finally meet.

There is something so delicious about this, the night that she knows will turn out to be one of the best of her life, as she lays before him like the wedding breakfast they had feasted on just hours ago, in nothing but her shoes with her cunt in his face, at his mercy as he kneels before her, still completely clothed in his regimental dress, insignia and medals gleaming, it’s dangerous and sinful and she cant help but ruefully smile at the thought, that when Jon made his vows and swore himself to Queen and Country those years ago, that this is certainly not what his superiors had in mind for him.

His gaze is dark and heavy, thick with every word they have yet to speak, about tomorrow and what this means for them, about how this will work and how they will _be_. Neither of them appears to have thought beyond falling into one another until now, but Jon, _her darling Captain_ , opens his precious mouth, and makes every promise and every reassurance she has ever needed to hear.

“If you think I am ever letting you go now,” he whispers darkly, “then you are mad,” and that is it, that is all she needs, eyes still locked with hers as he lowers his mouth and pressed his lips against her clit as she shakes and whimpers beneath him.

She wonders if she’ll go easy on him now or in the future, now that he has her, maybe, maybe not. She wonders when she will finally tell him that she loves him, because she does, that’s what _this_ is, for longer than she would care to admit, the Jon and Sansa thing that has always been there. He is every reason, the only reason why no one else has ever come close to this, to the passion she feels with one look at him between her legs, which his hands dipping tightly into her arse as he hauls her ever closer to him as his tongue dips inside her.

He owns her.

She owns him.

And to her utter relief, six years later, she is gloriously, wonderfully, accepting of that fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stick a fork in me, I'm done.


End file.
